Tracking the musings of joshp

April 28, 2006

So far we’ve got two cities (Seattle & Cleveland) with more than 10 locals signed up to help us build the next generation of the 43places site – focused on a set of features that expand local knowledge and encourage urban exploration. By my count, here is the score for the rest so far:

Draft your friends! Message a stranger. Give us suggestions to better advertise the goal. We are super excited about the work we are doing on 43places.com – let us know what you think we need to do to get 13 more cities super excited too!

April 19, 2006

When we had the idea for 43 Things, we were excited by how the same sort of website could facilitate sharing information about other topics, like places. But 15 months ago, when we launched 43 Things, we had no idea how popular travel goals were going to be.

In response we built 43 Places – based around the idea that we all have a list of places we want to go – as well as a mental map of all the spots we’ve been. We got that site out in June of 2005. Now we are busy working on a new release. Part of the call for 150 volunteers (at least 10 people in 15 cities) is to include some of our most passionate users in helping us redevelop the site to be even more fun and engaging than it already is.

When we did the first release of 43 Places, we ended up putting a fair amount of emphasis on world travel. We had a big world map on the homepage. We had maps on the profile page. We asked “where in the world do you want to go?”. With the next release, we are interested in making the site a playground for urban exploration. While we love travel, unfortunately, most days we are in our own neighborhoods. But why can’t we live in our cities with that kind of enthusiasm for new places and new experiences we take with us on vacation.

Anyway, that is the spirit of “wingsong” the next release – and we would love to get the 88 people on this goal involved in helping us decide what we ought to do!

One of our ideas was to start building a “local” site for any city with 10 locals. That is why we put out this call for help. We thought, we’d supply the tools to facilitate sharing your local knowledge with the world, and maybe in the process, we’d build a site together that helps us connect more with the people around us, as well as discover new experiences in our own cities. We have lots of ideas for ways to trade local knowledge, ways to facilitate exploring cities with other locals – and even ways to change the whole travel experience by building a culture of generosity and exploration through 43 Places.

What do you think? Please let us know what would make this next release work for you. Are you excited about the local direction? In the next couple days we’ll add posts about some of the new features we are working on (check-ins, regulars, events, and more on the “local” sites), but for now, let’s start daydreaming about how we want to connect with other locals.

Thanks to everybody for joining in on this goal. We are making a bit of progress preparing for an influx of passionate locals. I’m impressed by the turnout from Singapore and Vancouver. It might be a few weeks before we send out the invites, but all the people on this goal will hear about it first.